Ah, the joy of having to miss a day at this during the week! So much to explore. So much to discover. So much to get behind on. 😦 Off to the great stuff (and a close with something more than a little weird). Like one of my last posts, this one has a certain flow to it, starting with…
- Joe Moore (@JoeMoore_writer) identifying on The Kill Zone the two Magic Words that can start just about any writing adventure. Know what they are? Sure you do. “What if?”
- So where and when are you going to set the story than answers “What if?” Well, maybe in a fantasy setting, in which case Chuck Wendig’s (@ChuckWendig) 25 Things You Should Know About Writing Fantasy might help. Or it might not. Chuck himself warns us that he is “woefully underqualified” (his emphasis) to provide this list. And you should be aware of, and perhaps beware of, two other things: (1) this is a long post, almost 3,000 words, and (2), Chuck being Chuck, the f-bomb is going to find its way into the post more than once.
- Before you can get to getting the story down, however, you might want to do some interviews. Why? Barbara O’Neal (@barbaraoneal) explains and provides some examples in The Art and Power of Interviews on Writer Unboxed.
- Finally, it’s time to start writing. But how? With action, right? In medias res, right? SLAM! BANG! BOOM! CRASH! Right? Um, maybe. Or maybe not. Kristin Nelson explains how Action Vs Active Openings…Grab Attention on her Pub Rants blog. (Actual title slightly edited to fit into the text here.)
- [Some months later…] Whew! The writing’s done. Time for critiques. Amazingly, four different posts addressed critiquing just in the past two days.
- We’ll start with a bit of self-critique, or self-editing. Kim Weiland (@KMWeiland) warns us that there’s a word that too often is dropped in by authors who aren’t even aware that they’re doing that. What word would that be? Find out in A Quick Ode Against “That” on WORDplay. (A note: Kim’s video didn’t run when I visited the site on two separate occasions, but the transcript’s just below the intro screen, so that’s all right.)
- Gabriela Pereira (@DIYMFA) follows with two posts on critique groups on DIY MFA: 3 Things I Look for in a Critique Community and Critique vs. Discussion: What Kind of Feedback Do You Need? I fully agree with her three things, plus add one: a group that works the way you need it to. See my comment on that post for more. The second post offered an insight I hadn’t considered before. Interesting thought.
- Then, once you’ve gotten that feedback from your critique group, Carleen Brice suggests How to Tackle Critique Notes on Writer Unboxed. Now, her post deals most with things like an editorial letter from an agent, editor, or beta reader, but they apply just as well to the comments from you friendly (let’s hope! See Gabriela’s first post above) neighborhood critters (critiquers).
- So now it’s time to publish. Indie or legacy? Kathryn Lilley (@kathrynelilley) enters the fray with a new (to me, anyway) and eminently sensible discussion of Becoming Your Own Gatekeeper on The Kill Zone.
- And finally, for the main topics today, Ed Cyzewski (@edcyzewski) discusses his thoughts on Why Self-Publishing Is a Tragic Term on Jane Friedman’s (@JaneFriedman) blog. Hmm. “Tragic” might be a bit of a stretch, but Ed’s point is that almost any publishing effort takes a community of people, not just a single individual.
And finally-finally, a little bit of news of the weird, from Kevin Kelly’s (@kevin2kelly) The Technium blog: I See Cats. Seems some Google artificial intelligence researchers linked together a set of 16,000 computer cores (the central processing units) running a special program and turned the network loose to “view” ten million randomly downloaded pictures from the internet, specifically YouTube videos. What did they find? Cats. Without ever being told, “this is a cat” or “go look for cats.” Here’s the full New York Times article. As Mr. Spock would have said, “Fascinating.”
Pretty good stuff, no?
cochisewriters 